Tattoo
by foxy.witch
Summary: Hecate not only kissed him, she marked him. An insult Vanessa will not tolerate. One-shot. Semi-au around/post season two finale. Vanessa/Ethan feels because I just finished season two and everything hurts. Complete. I think.


An semi-au post the season two finale. Just a little moment that popped into my head.

Tattoo

"Hecate has marked you," she did not look at him. He found that to be almost worse than the sound of her voice and the hollow emptiness he found there. "She has marked you as her own."

Almost.

Her betrayal was palpable and his guilt left him bereft of words. He could do nothing but wait. He was a monster, after all: he had no right to anything else.

Eternities passed in a moment.

"There is something I can do, something I could try. If that be your wish, Mr Chandler." Her voice was a mere murmur but he heard her clear as the grace of God. He was convinced he would be able to hear her anywhere, that her voice would be the last he heard in this waking life.

"Anything, Miss Ives." And he would do anything, would let her do anything, gladly. Anything for her to call him Ethan again.

It occurred to him that he should have realised how far and how hard he had fallen for her. Though, he supposed, since the first moment in her parlour and the card he picked, he always had known.

She turned to him but did not immediately meet his eyes. When she did, it was the cool gaze of Miss Ives the Untouchable, the Unreachable.

He felt the guilt rise inside him and take hold of him like the Beast, but before it could reach his heart he made a choice.

Dammit, he would have this moment.

He stepped towards her, and in that instant, saw past her glacial exterior into the inferno within.

"This ends now," he cupped her face in his hands, rested his forehead against hers. When she did not immediately pull away from him, he nearly wept with relief.

They stayed that way for a long time.

Her lips moved, oh so close to his, he could feel rather than hear the vibration of her words. "No more hiding, no more pretend."

They pulled away, just barely a breath from one another, and brown eyes opened and gazed into fathomless blue. Slowly, as one would with an animal, she took his hand in her own slender one and brought his fingertips to her lips. The softest of touches – if he had blinked, he would have missed it.

She turned from him then, a breathless swish of skirts. "Please, take a seat." She gestured to her bed whilst she took her small dagger down from the mantle. He did as she asked, watched as she glided across the room towards him. He knew what she was going to do, the dagger all but confirmed it. What he did not expect was for her to kneel before him.

She looked into him and he into her. He could have been naked, and perhaps this was true nakedness, to bare oneself utterly unto another. She knew all there was in him and he knew all that was in her: two monsters gazed into the abyss and two people stared back. She seemed to see something in his eyes – his thoughts, his soul, his feelings – he wasn't quite sure, though whatever it was seemed to be the last barrier to fall between them.

Leaving the dagger in her lap, she reached up with pale slender fingers and slowly began unbuttoning his shirt. Neither spoke a word and neither seemed able to look away from the other. They were ensnared in something beyond the both of them, far older than good or evil: fate.

Bringing the dagger between them, she murmured a prayer in latin, then passed the blade across her thumb. He was hypnotised by her, enraptured: he could not imagine a world in which she did not exist. He thought of the day they met and wondered what it would have been had she not been at his show, had they not found one another. The thought stirred a darkness within him, almost to the point of physical pain, and he banished it from his mind.

She pressed her thumb to his chest and brought his thoughts back to her in the present. The feel of her feather-light touch brought to the surface small sparks of that elusive something that always plagued him when she was near. He wondered if she felt them too as she effortlessly drew her glyph across his chest. She still murmured latin and he wondered how she was able to draw, pray, and still be the centre of his whole universe without looking away from him.

When she stopped, his first response was to beg her to continue. He blinked, was about to reach for her wounded thumb to – what? to kiss? he wasn't quite sure – when the pain started.

Blinding agony. He could not draw breath to scream, so he merely gaped silently, his face a mask of terror as white hot pain exploded from his chest. He was aware of the floor suddenly beneath him, aware that Vanessa was there and that she was speaking or screaming but he could not focus on anything other than the fire and ice coursing through his blood, the shards of glass in his eyes, the ash in his throat. The Beast within him roared, enraged, in pain, unable to fight back. It was as if he had swallowed the sun and was drowning in the ocean all at once. Reaching blindly for something, anything to pull him back from this Hell, and just as darkness fluttered malevolently at the edge of his vision, cool hands took his face. Suddenly all he could see was blue. His heart slowed, beat by beat, until he could breathe normally once more. The pain receded like the tide. He could do nothing but wait until his raw nerves grappled with clarity and found stillness.

Was it raining?

Her voice pulled him from the dimness of fatigue, "I am so sorry Ethan, I did not know what it would mean. Forgive me. Forgive me."

She was above him and it was she who was raining. Without thinking, he reached up and thumbed her tears away, leaving his hand against her cheek. After a moment, she leaned into his hand, took it in her own and kissed his palm, before returning it to her cheek.

He shook his head and his tongue finally remembered how to work. "For you Vanessa, I will suffer any and all. There is no cause for you to be forgiven, though I will grant it anyway – I can see in your eyes it will haunt you otherwise."

Slowly, she smiled. "You know me too well."

His own answering grin brought light to her eyes. "Well enough, though I could know you better."

They shared another forever before he insisted on getting off the floor.

"What happened?" He murmured as he traced the lines on his chest in fascination. After he had wrapped a small cloth around her thumb, they had sat together on her bed, bodies angled toward each other, both looking at the newly formed scorpion on his chest.

"To be honest, I am not quite sure."

He watched her carefully. "…But if you had to guess?"

She did not respond immediately, as if weighing something in her mind. She seemed to make a decision and took a breath, "I think… Ethan, I think I branded you. I think that drawing I did become something very real. I was so… so determined that Hecate would never have you, I think I imbued it with more strength than I meant to. I think that scar, that tattoo, is because–"

He did not dare speak, dare move, dare to even breathe. They had reached yet another crossroads, and this time it was she who was to make the decision.

She looked straight into his eyes and finished simply, "because I could not let you go."

Of all his possible reactions, he doubted she expected him to pull her into his arms. Her arms came about him automatically. He huffed out a quiet laugh. "Nessa, it's all right. Honestly, knowing the two of us, we ought to have known better." Pulling away from one another, each smiled, her's slightly more hesitant. It faded when she caught sight of the mark. She reached out and lightly traced the lines with her fingertips. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the sensation.

"Does it hurt?" Her voice was soft, vulnerable as the wings of a baby bird. He opened his eyes but she wasn't looking at him. This time he did not mind.

"It has it's own weight." He stopped abruptly and scowled, looked around the room as if looking for better words, "There's this vague sensation of the mark being corporeal and yet ephemeral, ethereal. I find it strangely…" He paused, found the word, "Comforting."  
Her velvet voice held the promise of a smile. "There are stranger comforts, I am sure."

He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, wondered if his heart was beating as loud as he thought it was, then kissed her forehead. Best to stay as chaste as possible, least he lose control.

But he lingered near her, breathed her in, before finally leaning away. He stood and offered his hand to her, "We should eat." She nodded, took his hand and stood. They were inches apart, he could feel the heat from her body, could feel the slightest of shivers pass through her, and a tiny sliver of pride came from the thought he might have caused them. She did not let go of his hand.

Together they left her room and wandered to find some food before facing the rest of the trials ahead. The Scorpion and her Wolf, as it was meant to be.


End file.
